The Measure(13)
“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” —Matthew 7
Nina didn’t believe anything she read, it was all just conjecture. But it was comforting to know that there were thousands of people, millions even, who were just as unnerved as she was, and just as interested in finding the truth, if such a thing even existed.
On Sunday evening, when Maura was at her support group, Nina thought about the man in Verona, and what her coworker had said. It was an unsettling thought that someone was essentially immune to dying until they reached the end of their string—especially strange for those, like Nina, with long ones.
Sitting in bed, Nina pulled out her laptop and searched “long string + death” to see if anything might come up.
The query led her to a new site, Don’t Try This at Home, with its own ongoing discussion. When she reached the forum, it was filled with the accounts of seemingly reckless long-stringers pushing the limits of their strings.
I have a long string and a few days ago I OD’d on painkillers but my roommate found me and here I am!! Thanks string!!
My girlfriend and I had been wanting to play with asphyxiation for a while and we both have long strings so figured now is the time. 10/10 would recommend ;)
Happy 22 to me! Got a long one! ? Looking for some Special K to celebrate
Nina had to stop reading. How could so many people be willing to experiment with their lives?
But hearing their stories only made the mystery of the boxes that much more disturbing, the power of the strings even more potent. It was like the strings knew your response all along, as if they were somehow able to account for any daredevil tendencies when determining your final measurement. They could somehow see which drugs and games and jumps would be fatal, and which would merely end up as morbid one-liners posted online for whoever happened to be browsing.
Nina felt sick. She closed her laptop and curled up her legs under the sheets, hoping Maura would come home soon.
Maura
Despite her early reluctance to join the group, Maura left that first session already looking forward to the next Sunday night. She knew that Nina purposefully swallowed any discussion of the strings in her presence, trying to maintain some chimera of normalcy in their lives—and for that Maura was usually grateful—but it was actually quite freeing to enter a space where no subject was verboten, where the kid gloves came off.
“I’m so depressed,” Chelsea opened a session, one night in late April.
“About your string?” Maura asked.
“No.” Chelsea sighed. “Well, yes. But tonight I’m also depressed because Grey’s Anatomy just got canceled.”
“Hasn’t that been on forever?” Terrell asked.
“That’s why it’s so crazy! It ended out of nowhere. TMZ thinks somebody high up at the show must have gotten a short string and quit.”
“Well, you’re welcome to shadow me at the hospital.” Hank smiled. “Though I can’t promise any torrid affairs.”
“Did you hear the Spice Girls might get back together?” Lea asked. “Rumor is that one of them’s a short-stringer now and wanted to reunite before . . . you know.”
As curious as she was, Maura couldn’t help but feel sorry for the people they were discussing. Sure, they had chosen a public life, but wasn’t this somehow different, off-limits? Speculation and gossip were running rampant by then, and not just about actors and singers. In the checkout lines at stores, during previews at the movies, at the next table over in any restaurant, it was common to hear people guessing at the length of someone’s string. Quitting a job, getting engaged, being unusually cagey at a party, anything could be construed to support either side, long or short. “They claim they haven’t looked, but I know that isn’t true,” was a wildly popular refrain. It made Maura wonder what people said about her, the ones who didn’t know.
What’s worse, Maura realized, it was all their fault. They had brought this upon themselves. Even before the boxes appeared, the traditional barriers of privacy had long been collapsing, hers already a society of over-sharers. Maura, like so many others, had posted photo after photo online—of decadent meals, of the view from her office, of weekends at the beach with Nina—each one encouraging people to pry deeper and deeper into others’ lives, to expect a certain degree of transparency. Until, finally, even the act of looking at your string—what should have been the most intimate, the most personal of moments—became just another insight into your life that no longer belonged to you alone.
Had the strings arrived in any other century, Maura reasoned, nobody would have dared ask what was inside your box, leaving each household to quietly mourn or celebrate on their own, behind closed doors and drawn curtains. But not now, not in this modern era when feuds and flirtations played out online, when family milestones, professional achievements, and personal tragedies were all on display. Celebrities dodged interview questions about their strings. Athletes were probed about their “career prospects.” Song lyrics were ruthlessly examined for hints of a string-related message. Happy hour proved unexpectedly dangerous, with friends and coworkers fishing for drunken confessions. Members of the royal family, child stars, the sons and daughters of politicians, anyone with the misfortune of turning twenty-two in the spotlight, awoke that fateful morning under the nosy gaze of paparazzi lenses, aiming to capture the million-dollar reaction. The public demanded to know.